Abstract

With striking resonance, William Morris and John Dewey independently imagined what utopian education might plausibly be. Neither remotely thought of utopia as a perfectly ordered society, but rather as a process. Each understood education functionally in terms of how it fits with art, work, and democracy within a holistic conception of utopia. Their projections of utopian education envisage societies in which ends and means are integrated, and where useful productivity, pleasure, and rest are the reasonable achievements of all. Starting out from similar criticisms of education in class society, Morris and Dewey were utopian in ways that remain relevantly interesting.

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